Introduction

It’s been a few years since I bought a non‑Apple, non‑IoT device. Enter the Z2 Mini G1a, snagged on Black Friday and finally delivered last week. One reason I went HP (think AppleCare) is the warranty. HP also ships something called Wolf Security 🐺 (no idea what it really does), so instead of poking at that, I decided to wipe the pre‑installed Ubuntu OS. UEFI USB Boot Failed - how about PXE?

This should be simple, right? My AI buddy can whip up a PXE server in seconds… right? 🤖

FAIL

Repo: https://github.com/NickJLange/pxe-server

Lessons Learned 🧠

• HP “iLO” wasn’t what I paid $50 for — so that was fun
• USB UEFI boot sticks are not as easy as they sound
• Passing broadcast packets from src_net to a container while preserving the MAC address is tricky
  • Thought --net=host would solve it. It didn’t.
• Rootless containers + dnsmasq for TFTP = 🚫
  • Port 69 is hard‑coded for TFTP
  • Implication: don’t use dnsmasq for TFTP
• Don’t let the AI buddy build the PXE server for you
  • Fancy ideas like “download ISO on demand” wasted time
  • Just grab netboot.tar.gz for Ubuntu and move on
• TFTP is slow 🐢

New Things Learned 🧩

• nft ip mangle
• TFTP packet size throttling
• More dnsmasq surprises 🙃

If I had more time, I’d split dnsmasq into two instances:

• One for DHCP, using --net=host to avoid IP mangling headaches
• One for TFTP, just to remap the privileged port

Server BOM

• Ubuntu Linux 24.04
• HP Z2 Mini G1a w/AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ PRO 395 (3 GHz w/up to 5.1 GHz w/Boost, 16 core), Radeon 8060S Graphics + 128 GB memory
• ENERGY STAR Qualified Configuration
• Operating System Load to M.2
• 1 TB HP Z Turbo PCIe 4x4 M.2 TLC SSD
• 1 TB HP Z Turbo PCIe 4x4 M.2 TLC 2nd SSD
• RAID 0 Striped Array Configuration
• HP 2.5GbE Flex Port
• No Included Keyboard
• No Included Mouse
• 300W Z2 Mini EPA92 Power Supply
• C13 Flange Premium CWP Black Straight Desktop Workstations Power Cord US
• No Adapters Needed
• OS Localization
• 1/1/1 DM Label US
• Mediatek MT7925 Wi-Fi 7 +Bluetooth 5.4 AIM-T WW WLAN
• Compliant with TCO Certified
• No Country of Origin Restriction
• One-year (1/1/1) limited warranty
• (WKS Mini) Single Unit Packaging
• Z2 G1a Mini Country Kit U